Tag: National Association of Realtors

What if the custom has become beyond a point of reason. The change that appraisers have been asked to make is their new operating budget because their fees for one assignment is about the same amount you collect in one machine at a laundromat in the middle of the week.

Customary and Reasonable? For whom?? The consumer, unfortunately has certainly grow accustomed to paying higher appraisal fees, the management companies are certainly having no issue in taking half of the fee. Lenders certainly have not issue in charging the borrowers for the increased appraisal fees.

Yet appraisers continue to work for low fees, why? How is this reasonable? At what point was this considered customary?

I will admit that appraisers have done this to themselves. The refused to starve, refused to leave the business and refused to keep the fees in a level that would have been reasonable for their time and expertise. One you get one appraiser to lower their fees it does not take much time at all for the overall populace of appraisers to lower their fees to try to compete.

Today, the custom is no longer reasonable. The idea that appraisers bid for jobs in a matter of minutes, and the one with their finger on the chat feature of their smart phone gets the privilege of working at fees that are figuring at just above $15 per hour.

Each and every residential appraiser needs to really look into establishing a base of rental homes, where they have a passive income outside of appraisal. Then raise your fees. I remember when professionals billed their time based upon the complexity of the activity that they were asked to perform. For complex tasks the fee was higher, less time-consuming tasks rated a lower fee.

This will never change, until appraisers wise up and make the change. Create a passive income stream, hire a manager to keep that passive income active and profitable. Then appraise, because for the proud few it is in the blood, we will not ever retire, we will remeasure, rewrite and will never relent. Is anybody buying this????? Yeah, me either.

I guess I have dealt with customary and reasonable for so very long, that it felt good to be uncustomary and unreasonable even if for a few short seconds within the safety of my blog…

Married since 1982 to the same beautiful woman. Father of four girls and two boys. My oldest was born in 1984, my youngest born in 1994. I have been a real estate appraiser since 1983. I guess this synopsis is my way of dating myself, which come to think of it is not as much fun as it once was.. (smiling)